Taiwanese tech major HTC has not really been active in the budget phone market. It offered a few handsets earlier to people with a budget of around Rs.10,000, but there was nothing compelling in those handsets. The company is now trying to change this with the Desire 526G Plus. The question is: "is it too little, too late"?
HTC has been long criticized for its sheer obsession towards the premium segment. However, the times they are a-changin'. The last year or so has seen the arrival of the budget/mid-range segment and how. Chinese and domestic OEMs like Xiaomi and Micromax have shown to the world that you can pack in some neat hardware in your devices, and still be budget-friendly. Buyers are ready to explore uncharted territories now to fulfill their value for money quotient, rather than plainly sticking to some brand.
With the Desire 526G Plus, HTC has now dived into the budget segment with some noticeable changes in its regular scheme of things. At Rs.11,400, the Desire 526G Plus seems to be a good value for money handset, at least on paper. Can it actually take on the overcrowded budget segment though? We find out...
Design and build
The
HTC Desire 526G Plus will remind you of yesteryear's One X handset in
terms of design aesthetics, which is not a bad thing at all. In our
opinion, the One X was a pretty well-built device, so is the Desire 526G
Plus.This also means that the Desire 526G Plus does not ape other smartphones in this segment in terms of design. Let's be honest, most of the handsets in this price range tend to look more or less similar. The Desire 526G Plus on the other hand stands out in the crowd with a distinct identity.
The main display area is a raised platform carefully wedged between the upper and lower speaker grills. While the result looks sophisticated, it also means way too chunky bezels. Also, just to burst the bubble, you don't get BoomSound speakers in this one.
Cost cutting is evident from the fact that the device is entirely built of plastic. Our review unit, a glossy black was way too glossy and turned out to be smudge/fingerprint magnet. The edge is marked by a distinct band which in the case of the black unit looks like metal, but is plastic in reality. It's obviously there to break the monotony, but it does nothing for the black variant.
At 154 grams, it is slightly on the heavier side of things, but is still quite comfortable to hold and grip.
The back consists of a removable plastic panel which is again glossy and prone to smudge/fingerprints. It houses two microSIM card slots as well as a microSD card slot along with a removable battery.
The right edge houses the volume rocker and the power button which appear to be embedded into it but are flimsy and slightly loose to operate.
Display
Now,
the Desire 526G Plus has a 4.7-inch display. But the actual screen area
is slightly less at 4.6-inches. The budget segment is now home to way
too many 5 and 5.5-inchers. Therefore, the Desire 526G Plus with a
smaller screen sadly seems out of place in the crowd. The screen has a
resolution of 540x960 pixels and 234 ppi pixel density.The smaller display size and the equivalent pixel density on the device complement each other, so that there's not much evident pixilation observed unless you look very hard. That said, a 720p resolution would have done better justice to the device and its absence could be a deal breaker for some buyers.
We were pretty pleased with the vibrancy and colour reproduction of the device. The Desire 526G Plus has some really crisp viewing angles with only a hint of discoloration observed when viewing from different angles. The vibrancy too is good even in outdoor ambient lighting conditions when you're out and about. The surface is barely reflective; however smudge/fingerprints do tend to effect outdoor visibility to an extent.
At this price range, if you're ready to overlook the size and resolution values, the Desire 526G Plus is quite a good bet in terms of display output. Colours look good and well saturated so that reading text and watching videos is a non-straining affair on the device.
Software
The HTC Desire 526G Plus runs Android 4.4.2 KitKat out-of-the-box with the company's older Sense 5 UI on top.There is no word yet if the device will be updated to Android 5.0 Lollipop anytime soon, so we have our fingers crossed on that.
That said HTC's Sense UI needs no second introduction. It is perhaps one of the smoothest takes on Android and very functional. At the same time, it is not a major resource-hog, hence is also kind to the battery.
HTC's Sense UI tags along the much-popular BlinkFeed home screen news aggregator feature that is as smooth and functional as that found in the company's other handsets, including the premium ones.
Performance
The
HTC Desire 526G Plus is powered by a 1.66 GHz octa-core Mediatek MT6592
processor. It has 1GB of RAM (approx 960MB available to apps). Clearly, this is not the best hardware we have seen in this price category. However, these specifics are by no means 'humble' in terms of final performance output. This means, the Desire 526G Plus is in no way an under-powered device when put to use.
The device can handle everyday usual tasks with ease and we did not witness any evident lag while opening/closing of apps. The UI being a low-resource hog was fairly smooth and lag-free and navigating between apps was like a breeze on most occasions.
The device achieves a 3DMark score of 5052, PCMark score of 2438 and a Geekbench 3 score of 438 (single-core) and 2315 (multi-core).
In our tests we found the device performing significantly better than the Asus ZenFone 5, Micromax Canvas Nitro, even the Moto G (Second Gen). However, the current hot favourites of the market: the Xiaomi Redmi Note and the Yu Yureka maintain upper hand in comparison.
The device can run highly-graphics intensive games (Asphalt 8: Airborne, Modern Combat 5) fairly well. We were able to run Asphalt 8 at maxed out settings, however there was some lag with respect to game background. Reducing the graphics settings helps a great deal at achieving better frame rates.
The Desire 526G Plus comes with 16GB of internal storage of which about 11.97GB is available for use. The device supports expandable storage of up to 32GB via micro-SD card and also gives you an option to install apps directly on the same.
The lower grill on the front panel houses the speaker vent on the Desire 526G Plus. No, you don't get the much-loved BoomSound speakers here, but that doesn't mean the speaker on board the Desire 526G Plus is disappointing. In fact it is quite loud and punchy. Maybe its placement has something to do with it. We were pretty much satisfied with the sound output, however, on some occasions, depending on the music, the sound cracked at full volume. It was rare, though.
Overall, speaker output on the Desire 526G Plus is one of the better ones we have seen in this price category.
Phone calls made with the Desire 526G Plus are of acceptable quality and we did not see any major call drops with our review device. Both the earpiece as well as microphone sound quality is good. However, we did witness some sound distortion with respect to the earpiece grill.
Camera
The HTC Desire 526G Plus sports an 8MP rear autofocus camera with LED flash and a 2MP front-facing fixed focus snapper.These are pretty standard numbers for a device in this price category, therefore we can't say it's sad that HTC didn't manage more megapixels. HTC cameras have built quite the reputation for themselves over the years, in the premium segment, that is. The same cannot be said about its budget/mid rangers though. That said we were pretty pleased with the Desire 526G Plus on this front.
Images captured in outdoor ambient lighting conditions were fairly crisp and retained their colour and detail on most counts. Meanwhile, photos captured in indoor well lit conditions were passable. There was evident noise though.
That said low light images were downright bad on the device, with noise and lack of detail quite evident.
The primary camera on the Desire 526G Plus is definitely a better shooter than the Moto G (Second Gen), Asus ZenFone 5 and the Acer Liquid E700. However, in this price bracket, the Yu Yureka is certainly a better bet if you're looking for better photos. Even the Xiaomi Redmi Note is a fairly good shooter in this range.
The shutter speed of the primary snapper on the Desire 526G Plus was passable.
It can further record full 1080p videos @30fps. We found the videos to be noise prone even in well-lit conditions.
The 2MP secondary snapper on board the device is fairly good enough to capture decent selfies for all your Facebook/Instagram needs. There is some lack of detail in low light conditions though with noise also evident.
Check the following image samples to get an idea of HTC Desire 526G Plus Camera performance: Sample 1, Sample 2, Sample 3, Sample 4, Sample 5, Sample 6, Sample 7, Sample 8, Sample 9, Sample 10.
Battery
The
HTC Desire 526G Plus decks in a removable battery with a capacity of
2000mAh which is rated to deliver up to 15 hours of 3G talk time and 622
hours on stand-by, according to the company. The capacity is slightly smaller than that in the Moto G (Second Gen), Asus ZenFone 5 and way smaller than those found in the Yu Yureka and the Redmi Note.
While, we would of course have loved a bigger battery, the Desire 526G Plus cannot be accused of having a 'poor' battery life. In this price range, the battery on board the device is able to deliver pretty decent performance and the Sense UI has a lot to thank for it.
In our battery benchmark, we subjected the device to almost an hour of gaming (graphics intensive), web browsing (desktop mode), music on speakers (max volume) and phone calls every now and then (to the tune of an hour) and we got as much as 5 hours out of the device.
All in all, moderate usage will see you sail through an entire day, which is expected for a device in this price range.
Should you buy it?
The
Desire 526G Plus is HTC's attempt to make its presence felt in the
budget segment. Many might criticize its timing, for the sheer number of
impressive handsets in this price bracket is substantial as of current
stats. Entering an overcrowded market is never easy. Samsung and Sony
have been there, done that and have not done all that well. So, where
does that leave the Desire 526G Plus? Let's make one thing very clear: the Desire 526G Plus is every bit a capable device in this price range. A well rounded display, an octa-core processor that churns out a decent, lag-free experience, decent primary camera and a slick Sense UI that we've grown to love make it well worth your time. It sure has its share of shortcomings, the most important being the lack of a 720p display but we can live with that.
But it is not the best phone in its price segment. It is not even the second best. At a price of little over Rs.11,000 it is somewhat overpriced. Then it faces challenges from devices like the Moto G (2014 version), the Yu Yureka and the RedMi Note 4G. All three are better devices than the Desire 526G Plus, on some aspects by significant margin.
But the Desire 526G Plus does have one advantage. Its competitors, who are better than it, are only available online. In fact, in case of the RedMi Note 4G and the Yureka, the availability is not even guaranteed when you want to buy the phone. So, if you've had enough of that entire flash sale hullabaloo, the 16GB variant of the Desire 526G Plus can be grabbed via major retailers across the country and it's a viable alternative.
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